BOISE, Idaho - The Thunderbird women's basketball team picked up a victory over in-state rival Weber State on Monday evening at CenturyLink Arena, advancing to the Second Round of the Big Sky Conference Championship Tournament.
The Lady T-Birds will now move on to play the No. 3 seed Idaho State on Tuesday evening.
"I thought towards the end we made some big plays, and defensively we were better in the second half," SUU head coach Tracy Sanders said immediately following the contest. "Obviously at the end, you've got to take care of the ball."
Rebecca Cardenas was the story of the night for the T-Birds, scoring 28 points on 9-of-16 shooting from the field. She also had seven steals and drew 11 fouls in the contest. Jessica Chatman was the next leading scorer with eight points. Ashley Larsen was the top rebounder for the Thunderbirds with six boards.
As a team, the Thunderbirds forced the Wildcats into 30 turnovers and only turned the ball over 14 times themselves, including just four turnovers in the second half.
"We knew they were going to come out hot, we knew they had a tough season and they were going to try and make the most of it," Cardenas said postgame. "We didn't come into this game thinking it was going to be easy and that's exactly what it was."
The Thunderbirds opened the game by forcing three-straight Wildcat turnovers before Shalyn Fano got the scoring started with a bucket off of the third turnover. Weber State then went on a 6-0 run and jumped out to an early 6-2 lead.
The Thunderbirds took the lead back as Harley Hansen capped off a 10-4 run with a jumper in the paint to make it 12-10 with 4:49 to go in the quarter. However, the Wildcats would go into the second quarter with a 18-14 lead.
The Wildcats continued to pour it on in the second quarter, building their lead up to nine with 6:21 to go in the half. That's when Cardenas started to get hot. The senior scored the next eight points for the T-Birds to cut the lead to five with 2:56 remaining in the half. Southern Utah then went on a 6-0 run to get within one, but a last-second bucket from the Wildcats gave them a 32-29 lead at halftime.
Cardenas had 14 points and three steals at the half and the Thunderbirds forced the Wildcats into 15 turnovers in the first 20 minutes.
Southern Utah came out much stronger in the second half, putting together a 11-4 scoring run in the first five minutes to erase the deficit and take a two-point lead on a jumper from Ashley Larsen.
After the Wildcats were able to tie it back up, the T-Birds launched a 5-0 scoring run, with Hansen and Madelyn Eaton doing the heavy lifting. They would go into the final quarter leading 43-41.
The fourth quarter was a dogfight, with both teams chipping away at each other bit by bit. With the score tied at 43-43, Fano and Chatman both hit shots to give the T-Birds their biggest lead to that point at four. After the Wildcats got back within one, the Thunderbirds went on a 9-4 scoring run to make the score 56-49 in their favor.
The Wildcats never got closer than four from that point on, as the T-Birds went on to close out the 59-55 victory. They held Weber State to just 29.2 percent from the field and outscored them 20-8 in the paint in the second half.
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